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John Cowper Powys
John Cowper Powys (8 October 1872 - 17 June 1963) was a British philosopher, lecturer, novelist, literary critic, and poet. Although Powys published a collection of poems in 1896 a...view moreJohn Cowper Powys (8 October 1872 - 17 June 1963) was a British philosopher, lecturer, novelist, literary critic, and poet. Although Powys published a collection of poems in 1896 and his first novel in 1915, he did not gain success as a writer until he published the novel Wolf Solent in 1929. He was influenced by many writers, but he has been particularly seen as a successor to Thomas Hardy, and Wolf Solent, A Glastonbury Romance (1932), along with Weymouth Sands (1934) and Maiden Castle (1936), are often referred to as his Wessex novels. As with Thomas Hardy’s novels, the landscape plays a major role in Powys’s works, and an elemental philosophy is important in the lives of his characters. In 1934 he published his important Autobiography.
Powys was also a highly successful itinerant lecturer, first in England and then from 1905-1930 in the USA. Many of Powys’s novels were written in America and his early and all major novels, up to and including Owen Glendower (1940), as well as Autobiography, were first published in the United States.
Powys moved from America to Dorset, England in 1934 with his American partner Phyllis Playter, but in 1935 they moved to Corwen in Merionethshire, Wales. This led to the publication of two historical novels set in Wales: Owen Glendower (1941) and Porius (1951). Then in 1955 they moved to Blaenau Ffestiniog, where Powys died in 1963 at the age of 90.view less